CAVES OF ARUBA

CLICK ON EITHER PHOTO TO GO TO THE PAGE ABOUT THE CAVES

BY

BILL MOYER
It’s been a long time since I read about the geology of the Caribbean, and I may remember part of it wrong, but I do recall that there are large tectonic plates beneath “our” sea that are pushing land masses together and, sometimes, forcing their edges upward to form ridges, islands, and mountains.
Kids growing up in Aruba didn’t need to be told that, at one time or another, the rock under our feet had moved. We could see signs of movement--more precisely, of lifting--all around us. Lago Colony, where we lived, was built on long-dead, grey coral that stretched in a flat plain for miles. Just to the south of our houses, there was a cliff about thirty feet high, forming an escarpment between the residential area and another, lower, plain (also of old coral) extending to the sea. Inland, there was other, though smaller, cliffs that also showed signs of water erosion along their edges. The Caribbean had eroded small caves in the cliffs while they were rising, and when I was in grade school some other kids and I sometimes crawled into a small cave just south of the school, near stairs leading to the lower coral flat where the Massey’s lived. Just below the O’Brien house in the 200 Row, there was another such cave, too low to walk in but large enough for kids to crawl into or store things such as left over Christmas trees prior to a big January bonfire.
To the east, as into serve as a breakwater to huge, rolling waves coming in constantly from the same direction as the trade wind, rose a promontory perhaps one hundred feet high, of an entirely different substance. It was called “Colorado Point” (colorado meaning “colored” in Spanish) and was light brown and rusty red which contrasted dramatically compared to our grey coral. When you walked on it and picked up stones, you could see that the material had flowed and bubbled at some point, and that it was an iron compound with perhaps manganese or other metallic compounds completely unlike coral. (My theory is that it was once the western rim of a long extinct, long eroded, and long submerged volcano, but it could just as easily have been a volcanic dike squeezed up from below many years ago. Anyway, it was different.)
Along the northern, windy coast of the island was a fourteen mile stretch of coral plains, also marked by cliffs into an upper plain and a lower one. In the center of the island, however, there was something altogether different: solid granite4ike rock that might have once been inside a volcano but, in any event, looked igneous. Mount Yamanota, the highest point of the island, was oaf granite-like material full of veins of quartz in which small gold flakes were found. My friends and I liked to drive there and look for crystals down in the ditches that had been excavated years before, probably for gold extraction. Further west was a more dramatic mountain called “Hooiberg” (Dutch for “Haystack Mountain”) which protruded up from a flat plain in a triangular shape. Its rock was so distinctive it was called “hooibergite”, looking like an evenly-grained granite. To the west of Hooiberg, the ground again leveled off, and gave evidence of loess soil cover probably created by deposition of light dust coming from wind erosion of the stone from further east.
The coral rock, as it aged, turned into limestone, with a high phosphate content. This was the material that all the caves I saw on the island were made from. Both lime and phosphorous are valuable commodities for improvement of farming soil, and for production of chemicals. Consequently, back in the 1920’s, I believe, mining companies came to Aruba and dug tunnels to extract phosphate. One company built a small railroad extending from tunnels just west of Colorado Point to a little harbor in San Nicolaas (which was later dredged and extended to form the harbor for the Lago Oil refinery.) I climbed down into some of those holes as a kid but don’t remember that they were anything other than dug out tunnels. Miners could have enlarged earlier, natural, caves eroded by sea and wind, but I don’t know. The next series of diggings, though, about a mile southwest of Colorado Point and east of the original Lago Colony houses, were definitely natural caverns.
There was a hole in the coral about 20 feet wide and perhaps 40 feet long. It was about twenty feet deep--too deep to jump in. You had to use a ladder or, more conveniently, climb down a large tree (I don’t recall what kind--perhaps a divi-divi or even a seagrape tree, although I think the branches were bigger and sturdier than other seagrape trees I remember climbing in.) Once at the bottom of the tree, you were in a large, open area from which caves led in two or perhaps three directions--north, southwest, and I think also to the west. The area to the southwest opened up soon after you entered it, into a medium sized room with a constant dripping of moisture from the ceiling. There were stalactites (ones coming down from the ceiling have to hang “tite”, and ones coming up from the floor “mite” reach the ceiling) It was fun to visualize this as a shower room, although there really never was enough water flow for bathing.
The cavern to the north was quite long. Its ceiling was mostly high enough to permit you to walk comfortably upright, It curved to the northwest and opened into a fairly large room, beyond which was a beautiful stalagmite and stalactite formation almost in the shape of an altar. Behind that, the cave extended for many yards further west, gradually narrowing. The big room was a bit scary, because phosphate miners had drilled wells into the floor to get water to operate their mining hoses. This was scary to me because I figured I could probably find my way out of the cave in the dark if my flashlight ever went out, but there were enough stalactites hanging down that it would be hard to miss them all and, more critically, it might be hard to avoid falling into one of the wells (there were two, I think.) When I was in the cave by myself, I realized no one would be likely to find me for a while, especially if l were down in one of the wells.
The tunnel that went west behind the “altar” formation showed obvious signs of having been mined. Somehow, the phosphate miners must have followed a vein of high-phosphate-content rock through the natural cave, carving material out of the sides. The tunnel was thus enlarged by mining though you could see that its curving shape and fissured ceiling were natural. My recollection is that we kids crawled as far back into the tunnel as we could, and ran into cracks too small to enter, then turned back again.
Mr. and Mrs. Kaplan lived on the north edge of the expanse of coral in which the cave (we called it “The Colony Cave” at the time, or just “The Cave”) was located. Harvey Kaplan, a boy perhaps two years older than I was, was a very active and fearless kid. Like all of us, he wandered over the coral, throwing rocks at lizards living in fissures in the coral (which tended to fill in with light soil and grow little bushes that could nourish insects or lizards.) He found a crack in the coral just south of his home, bigger than average, and slithered into it on his stomach. Much to his delight, the crack opened up a little as he crawled east, and eventually led into the Colony Cave itself. The next day at school, he rushed to tell other kids about his discovery, which we very soon began to call “Kaplan’s Cave”! The next Saturday, along with the Burbage boys and perhaps Ronald Turner and others, I followed Harvey (also known as “Tootie”) Kaplan into his private tunnel. It gave me the creeps to have to slither on my stomach through a narrow passage while at the same time curving to the right, but “Tootie” was leading the way and showed no fear at all. As the tunnel became larger, the adventure became more exciting, and my recollection is that we emerged into the chamber just to the southwest of the main entrance to Colony Cave, where water dripped from many spots in the ceiling and lay in shallow puddles on the floor. Stepping out of the narrow tunnel into the large, familiar room was like walking into a mansion.
In high school, several of us kids once took advantage of Hydroponics Garden manager, Tom Eastman’s, trust by snitching gasoline from his small storage tank beside an emergency generator outside the Garden, to fill bottles with gasoline and make Molotov cocktails to throw against the walls of the Colony Cave. It was a stupid and reckless thing to do, littering the cave with broken glass, and I’m ashamed to have been so thoughtless. I paid a price by having flaming gasoline flow beneath my feet after one particularly bad throw, causing me to run impulsively from the area and bang my head on a vengeful stalactite.
 
My last memory of the Colony Cave is Ronald Turner’s Pirate Expedition. One day at school, Ronald whispered he was going to bury a Pirate Treasure in the cave, but in a secret place, so that none of us should come there while his nefarious work was in progress. The next Saturday, I watched as Ronald marched at the head of a small band including, if I remember correctly, the Featherstone twins, all suitably attired as pirates. Ronald wore a special hat or turban on his head, and pulled a wagon carrying digging tools and whatever he had decided made an appropriate Treasure. He and his hearties climbed down the tree at the entrance and entered the main tunnel to the north, and that was the last I saw of them until they came out again, unencumbered by Treasure. I looked in the cave later, but they may have turned over soil in many places to throw searchers off the track, and I couldn’t guess the Treasure’s location. I didn’t want to dig it up, anyway, because Ronald was a friend and sounded serious about wanting to leave his special mark on the cave.
Further up the north coast of Aruba, near Fontein, was another cave, in the seaward side of a large cliff. The last time I was in Aruba, this one was open for visitors, perhaps for a small entrance fee. My memory is that it was at least as large as the Colony Cave, but with a lot more holes in the ceiling from cave-ins. That made it brighter, but perhaps a bit less interesting. I never explored it to the end. There were enough bats in that cave that people from the Colony dug guano from its floor to fertilize their gardens at home.
There was another cave somewhere in the center of the Island that I never saw, but I remember my father saying that Mr. Baldwin (Paul and Bea’s father) and others had entered it and found burial urns containing remains of early Aruban Indians (Arawaks, I presume.) I never saw the cave, but the small Archaeological Museum in Orangestad has pictures of the urns and their contents. (see note below)  That museum also has photographs of an: "obsidian implement mine” somewhere in the vicinity of Hooiberg, where you can see a field full of rocks either in the shape of stone-age tools or in shapes that could easily be converted into tools by stone-age people. I once drove around Hooiberg trying to find that spot, but couldn’t locate it. There is at least one area that is blocked off by a big fence, with quarrying equipment of some kind inside . Some one may have removed the obsidian from that spot, or they may be taking another kind of stone from it. 
The other “caves” I remember were the brackish water tunnels in the Colony. I walked through one of them, probably when a lid was left open by accident by a Colony Service worker. Bill and Bob Burbage were with me, I think. We climbed down a metal ladder, perhaps five or six feet, and could then walk, stooping, through a narrow tunnel that had a foot or two of water in the bottom. It wasn’t a very attractive place, and there were bugs and maybe even an occasional dead lizard in the water. The tunnel led to another shaft to the surface, then went on. I don’t recall, however, how many of these tunnels were in the Colony. Maybe two-or at least more than the one I went into.
I can’t imagine how Lago engineers figured out that they could obtain water by tunneling under the coral-not fresh water, but a lot less saline than sea water, anyway. Brackish water didn’t clog pipes with salt and lime as much as seawater did, so was a desirable commodity. Dad told me that before the refinery was built, Aruba natives existed almost entirely on brackish water from wells, plus small dammed-up “rooi’s” (papiamento equivalent of “arroyo” in Spanish) that filled with fresh water during rains. Early photos show Aruban natives carrying brackish or fresh water from wells and ponds, in tin cans or small barrels strapped to the back of donkeys. So perhaps American engineers learned about brackish water wells from Aruban natives and did their best to provide the same facilities in the Colony.
My recollection is that we had salt water for toilets, brackish water for other household use and lawns, and precious fresh water for the kitchen sink. My Aunt Suze kept a pitcher of fresh water in the bathroom, under the sink, for rinsing her hair. Bermuda grass and St. Augustine would grow on brackish water, and so would some other plants, such as coconuts, bananas, croton, and poinsettias. I think Dad had to use fresh water for his beloved hibiscus plants, but am not sure--maybe that hose was for brackish water too. My other memory of our garden is that Dad had to buy dirt and spread it over the coral when we moved into Bungalow 1542. The dirt came from the downwind side of the island--the west end--and in our case, at least, had been in an area where sheep were raised. It was full of sheep manure, which was great for the garden but terrible for our dog, Whitie, because it was full of ticks that soon made their home in his fur. But that’s another story.
Bill Moyer, April 8, 2006
(NOTE) June 3, 2006  This from Paul S. Baldwin who went to Aruba in in 1935 at the age of four and sent me an email after his sister Beatrice (Bea) had read Bill's story CAVES OF ARUBA on the Lago Colony web site.  Paul's Uncle Leo went to Aruba in 1929, his father Paul E. Baldwin (Leo's brother) followed in 1934.  The family joined him in 1935.  Dan Jensen
PAUL WRITES:  Apparently you or someone, perhaps Bill, wrote something to the effect that our father Paul Baldwin found a Burial Urn on Aruba. I remember reading in another e-mail from someone (perhaps from Bill) this same information.  That information is not correct!  It was our Uncle Leo Baldwin, dads younger brother, who found that Burial Urn, in which was a mummified body.  I did send the corrected information to someone, but that was probably a year or more ago.